WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration said in a long-awaited new strategy document on Friday (Dec 5) that the United States will shift from its historic global role toward increasing dominance in Latin America and vigorously fighting migration.
The national security paper, meant to flesh out Trump’s norms-shattering “America First” worldview, signals a sharp reorientation from longstanding US calls to refocus on Asia, although it still identifies China as a top competitor.
The strategy also brutally criticised allies in Europe and said that the US will champion opponents to European Union-led values, including on immigration.
Breaking with decades of attempts to be the sole superpower, the strategy said that the “United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself”.
It said that the United States would also prevent other powers from dominating but added: “This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers.”
The strategy called for a “readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years”.
The strategy speaks in bold terms of pressing US dominance in Latin America, where the Trump administration has been striking alleged drug traffickers at sea, intervening to bring down leftist leaders including in Venezuela, and loudly seeking to take charge of key resources such as the Panama Canal.
The strategy cast Trump as modernising the two-century-old Monroe Doctrine, in which the then-young United States declared Latin America off-limits to rival powers, then from Europe.
“We will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine,” it said.